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THE HONEST WHORE. A COMEDY. BY THOMAS DECKER.

Hospital for Lunatics.

There are of mad men, as there are of tame,

All humǝr'd not alike. We have here some
So apish and fantastic, play with a feather;

And, though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act
Such antick and such pretty lunacies,

That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.

Others again we have, like hungry lions,

Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies.

Patience.

Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace :
Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven;
It makes men look like gods.—The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a Sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ;

The first true gentleman that ever breath'd.

THE SECOND PART OF THE HONEST WHORE.
BY THOMAS DECKER.

Bellafront, a reclaimed Harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her

profession.

Like an ill husband, though I knew the same

To be my undoing, follow'd I that game.
Oh when the work of lust had earn'd my bread,
To taste it how I trembled, lest each bit
Ere it went down should choke me chewing it.
My bed seemed like a cabin hung in hell,
The bawd hell's porter, and the liquorish wine
The pandar fetch'd was like an easy fine
For which methought I leas'd away my soul,
And oftentimes even in my quaffing-bowl
Thus said I to myself: I am a Whore,

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And have drunk down thus much confusion more.
when in the street

A fair young modest damsel* I did meet,
She seem'd to all a Dove, when I pass'd by,
And I to all a Raven; every eye

That follow'd her, went with a bashful glance;
At me each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn: to her as if she had been
Some Tower unvanquished would they vail;
'Gainst me swoln rumor hoisted every sail;
She crown'd with reverend praises pass'd by them,
I though with face mask'd could not 'scape the Hem;
For, as if heaven had set strange marks on whores,
Because they should be pointing stocks to man,
Drest up in civilest shape a Courtezan;
Let her walk saint-like noteless and unknown,
Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own.

The happy Man.

He that makes gold his wife, but not his whore,
He that at noon day walks by a prison door,
He that in the sun is neither beam nor moat,

• This simple picture of Honor and Shame, contrasted without violence, and expressed without immodesty, is worth all the strong lines against the Harlot's Profession, with which both Parts of this play are offensively crowded. A Satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective gust. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out Sinner is sometimes found to make the best Declaimer against Sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a Moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. No one will doubt, who reads Marston's Satires, that the author in some part of his life must have been something more than a theorist in vice. Have we never heard an old preacher in the pulpit display such an insight into the mystery of ungodliness, as made us wonder with reason how a good man came by it? When Cervantes with such profi. ciency of fondness dwells upon the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great reader of books of Knight-Errantry? perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of falling into those very extravagances which he ridi cules so happily in his Hero?

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He that's not mad after a petticoat,

He for whom poor men's curses dig no grave,
He that is neither Lord's nor Lawyer's slave,
He that makes This his sea and That his shore,
He that in 's coffin is richer than before,

He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff,
He whose right hand carves his own epitaph,

He that upon his death-bed is a Swan,

And dead, no Crow; he is a Happy Man.*

WESTWARD HOE. A COMEDY. BY THOMAS DECKER AND JOHN WEBSTER

Sweet Pleasure!

Pleasure, the general pursuit.

Delicious Pleasure! earth's supremest good,
The spring of blood, though it dry up our blood.
Rob me of that (though to be drunk with pleasure,
As rank excess even in best things is bad,
Turns man into a beast) yet, that being gone,
A horse, and this (the goodliest shape) all one.
We feed; wear rich attires; and strive to cleave
The stars with marble towers; fight battles; spend
Our blood, to buy us names; and in iron hold
Will we eat roots to imprison fugitive gold :
But to do thus what spill can us excite ?
This; the strong magic of our appetite :
To feast which richly, life itself undoes.
Who'd not die thus ?

Why even those that starve in voluntary wants,
And, to advance the mind, keep the flesh poor,
The world enjoying them, they not the world;
Would they do this, but that they are proud to suck
A sweetness from such sourness?

*The turn of this is the same with Iago's definition of a Deserving Woman: "She that was ever fair and never proud," &c. The matter is superior.

Let music

Music.

Charm with her excellent voice an awful silence
Through all this building, that her sphery soul
May (on the wings of air) in thousand forins
Invisibly fly, yet be enjoy'd.

LINGUA; A COMEDY. BY ANTHONY BREWER.

Languages.

The ancient Hebrew, clad with mysteries;
The learned Greek, rich in fit epithets,
Blest in the lovely marriage of pure words;
The Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical,
The Roman eloquent, and Tuscan grave,

The braving Spanish, and the smooth-tongued French

Tragedy and Comedy.

-fellows both, both twins, but so unlike

As birth to death, wedding to funeral :
For this that rears himself in buskins quaint,
Is pleasant at the first, proud in the midst,

Stately in all, and bitter death at end.

That in the pumps doth frown at first acquaintance,
Trouble the midst, but in the end concludes

Closing up all with a sweet catastrophe.

This grave and sad, distained with brinish tears:
That light and quick, with wrinkled laughter painted:
This deals with nobles, kings, and emperors,

Full of great fears, great hopes, great enterprizes;
This other trades with men of mean condition,
His projects small, small hopes, and dangers little:
This gorgeous, broider'd with rich sentences:
That fair, and purfled round with merriments.
Both vice detect, and virtue beautify,

By being death's mirror, and life's looking-glass.

THE HISTORY OF ANTONIO AND MELLIDA. THE FIRST PART. BY JOHN MARSTON.

Andrugio, Duke of Genoa, banished his country, with the loss of a son, supposed drowned, is cast upon the territory of his mortal enemy the Duke of Venice with no attendants but Lucio, an old nobleman, and a Page.

Andr. Is not yon gleam the shudd'ring Morn that flakes
With silver tincture the east verge of heaven?

Luc. I think it is, so please your Excellence.
Andr. Away, I have no Excellence to please.
Prithee observe the custom of the world;
That only flatters greatness, states exalts.
And please my Excellence! O Lucio,
Thou hast been ever held respected, dear,
Even precious to Andrugio's inmost love :
Good, flatter not.

My thoughts are fixt in contemplation

Why this huge earth, this monstrous animal

That eats her children, should not have eyes and ears.
Philosophy maintains that Nature's wise,

And forms no useless nor unperfect thing.

Did Nature make the earth, or the earth Nature?
For earthly dirt makes all things, makes the man,
Moulds me up honor, and, like a cunning Dutchman,
Paints me a puppet even with seeming breath,
And gives a sot appearance of a soul.
Go to, go to; thou ly'st, Philosophy.
Nature forms things unperfect, useless, vain.
Why made she not the earth with eyes and ears?
That she might see desert and hear men's plaints ;
That when a soul is splitted, sunk with grief,
He might fall thus upon the breast of Earth,
And in her ear halloo his misery,

Exclaiming thus: O thou all bearing Earth,

Which men do gape for till thou cramm'st their mouths
And choak'st their throats with dust: open thy breast,
And let me sink into thee: look who knocks;
Andrugio calls. But O she's deaf and blind.

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